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It is impressive to see how long it takes to restore lost qualities at a regional scale. In the Wadden Sea and Chesapeake programs where restoration is the central goal, it has taken several years to make the transition from sustained Second Order actions
and investments to a point where there is evidence that improvements in water quality, greater abundance of a targeted species, or sustained benefits for a sector of the society can be attributed to the program’s actions. It is, therefore, very important that a
program’s plan of action include initiatives that will provide positive feedback more quickly and provide the evidence that the movement of change is in the desired direction. Neighborhood restoration projects, events and actions that demonstrate that new
forms of cooperation are being achieved, are critically important in demonstrating that the program is worthy of support.
The Successful Integration of Science with Democratic Governance
Governance is fueled by values. The crucially important steps of defining what issues an ecosystem management program will address, framing the programs and selecting the strategies by which the program will channel its energies are all shaped largely
by values. Yet, at the initial stages in each program, there were strong voices proclaiming that governance must be based on science and science alone. Today, the three programs recognize that success lies in interweaving the knowledge and insights that science
can provide with the messy, value-laden processes of democratic participation and debate. The three programs teach that science is essential for defining what “is,” but is of limited usefulness when deciding what “should be.”
Lee 1993, in a detailed assessment of the governance of another large ecosystem, the Columbia River in the northwest U.S., concludes that there are two dominant threads in the practice of adaptive ecosystem management. The first is the governance
process that examines the interests of the many stakeholder groups and negotiates plans and policies, makes decisions and then applies enforcement mechanisms that are transparent and accountable to those affected by its actions. Lee characterizes this as a
process of “bounded conflict” in which conflicting values and different interpretations of the available information are democrati- cally negotiated. The second thread is the generation and incorporation of reliable knowledge that allows the manager to better
understand, and sometimes to forecast, the consequences of different courses of action. Lee emphasizes that such knowledge does not flow only from “the sciences” but rather is the product of the scientific method. This definition embraces verifiable traditional
knowledge and the conclusions drawn from the observations of people who may not be “scientists.” From this perspective, management policies and actions can be viewed as experiments. When a program’s policies are based upon clearly stated hypoth-
eses and evaluated by suitable indicators, they may be considered as “science-based,” adaptive management and are succeeding in the integration illustrated graphically in Figure 9. As stated by Lee 1993, “Without experimentation, reliable knowledge accumu-
lates slowly, and without reliable knowledge, there can be neither social learning nor sustainable development.”
5. Impediments to Large Scale Adaptive Ecosystem Management In Low-Income Nations
This review was motivated by the authors’ involvement in a number of coastal management initiatives in low-income developing nations over the past three decades. We have been repeatedly impressed by the difficulty of sustaining promising
initiatives in coastal management even where the magnitude of the investments to develop governance structures and processes for coastal ecosystems is large. Many of these investments have focused on small geographic areas as “pilots” in the expectation that
they will be scaled up to address systems of the magnitude and significance represented by these three cases. Yet, such scaling up is not occurring as quickly as expected. Our review suggests that a number of conditions that are important to the success of the cases
we have reviewed are rarely present in developing countries.
The first is that the time required to sustain changed behavior long enough, and over sufficiently large spatial scales to achieve a harvest of desired environmental and social results, is measured in decades. The unstable political and economic condi-
tions present in many low-income nations make sustained, purposeful action very difficult. Furthermore, international donors have preferred in the 1990s to invest in NGOs and experiment with less centralized forms of governance. This tendency is rooted in
frustration in investing in governmental institutions that have not fulfilled their commitments. Yet, alternative arrangements outside government institutions that hold the promise of being effective as governance that can advance towards desired social and environ-
mental conditions are proving elusive. We believe that this review points out why this is the case. Conditions that encourage sustained but adaptive governance are seldom present. The mechanisms for making the transition from a successful short-term
project to a sustained program have not been put in place. For example, the Global Environmental Facility GEF has been designed to fund initiatives that address environmental issues with a global impact. One cluster of investments is being made in projects
designed to protect coastal biodiversity of greater than national interest in several sites in Latin America and the Caribbean Olsen et al., 1999; Olsen and Ngoile, 1998; Olsen et al., 1997; Olsen and Tobey, 1997. The GEF funds, however, are available only to
launch these programs—not sustain them. There are currently no mechanisms for sustained core funding within a system that nests governance from the global to the local scales. To the contrary, the GEF requires that issues of global concern be segregated from
those that are a national or local responsibility and that GEF funds be directed at the former.
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6. Assembling the Enabling Conditions for the Governance of Large Coastal Ecosystems: The Challenges
The three cases lead us to reflect upon the challenges of applying the conclusions that we have drawn from our analysis to coastal regions we have known in Latin America, the Gulf of Thailand, the Gulf of Bengal, Indonesia and East Africa. In these
regions the need for new approaches to the governance of coastal ecosystems is, if anything, more urgent than in the relatively wealthy and politically stable nations in which the three cases have evolved. There remain many opportunities to mount efforts to
conserve what is still present. It is far more difficult, costly and uncertain to restore what has been lost. Unfortunately, the trend is accelerating toward conditions where restoration is the priority, and our impression is that the bulk of the investment in better
coastal governance is being directed at ecosystem restoration rather than pre-emptive action. The exception—and it is a big exception—are the investments in biodiversity conservation. We would argue, however, that these too often do not embrace the
adaptive, ecosystem governance philosophy. They target one issue biodiversity and often give scant attention to the needs of the associated human population.
A striking characteristic of the contexts within which the three cases have evolved is that they are all places where the society as a whole operates within a formalized system of laws, rules and institutional procedures. In contrast, in many low-income nations
a large portion of the human population lives outside the system of governmental rules and procedures. Illegal activities such as those in fisheries, the construction of shrimp farms, and in the discharge of untreated wastes frequently proceed in flagrant disregard
of officially sanctioned rules. In these situations, it may be relatively easy to win a governmental mandate for a new program but the mandate may have little meaning in practical, operational terms. Particularly at the large ecosystem scale, the fabric of coastal
governance in low-income countries is far more fragile and unstable than it is in the nations represented in the three cases we have examined. In most low-income nations, the construction of nested systems of governance is an urgent priority, but is incipient. The
situation may be more favorable for the management of large marine ecosystems since these are typically more inaccessible than estuaries and nearshore waters used by artisanal fishers. The activities subject to management are often controlled by a few
industrial-scaled fishing and mining operations and do not involve large populations of people living in poverty.
Within politically and socially unstable contexts, the need for continuity of effort is especially important. In the three cases examined, the sustained funding of a secretariat with a clear mandate and strong leadership has been critical to forward progress and
a harvest of improved environmental and societal conditions. This contrasts with the current practice in many low-income nations where coastal management at all spatial scales tends to be designed and administered as short-term “projects.”
Perhaps surprisingly, our experience is that in low-income nations local people are receptive to a process of goal setting and to processes that lead to changes in behavior that support a coastal stewardship initiative. The bigger challenge lies in influencing
the forces that act upon coastal ecosystems during an era of globalization. External investors currently operate with minimal constraints and too often have little long-term interest in the well-being of a given natural resource or place. Particularly among the
poor, who rely directly upon their local resources for a livelihood, stewardship practices are appealing as long as the changes in behavior required of them are perceived as fair and do not constrain them to the point that their quality of life is reduced rather than
sustained or enhanced. This suggests that future efforts in coastal management need to address planning and decisionmaking at the scale of large coastal ecosystems and to nest small, pilot-scaled initiatives within these larger frameworks. Such an approach may
win the attention and support of not only local communities but of the international interests that are driving ecosystem change at bigger scales.
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7. References and Sources
